


all is fun. in love and war

by sunnydisposish



Category: Bandom, Fueled by Ramen, fun.
Genre: Explicit Language, F/M, Gen, Headcanon, Multi, RPF, cautionary angst, chronicle - Freeform, snapshot drabbles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-26
Updated: 2013-03-01
Packaged: 2017-11-26 23:05:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 13,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/655368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunnydisposish/pseuds/sunnydisposish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He thumbs the silver band on his ring finger, thinking of how long this engagement is going to be.<i> A very, very long one</i>. He seats himself on a barstool, places his battered flugelhorn case on the table, and begins to list his regrets in his head.</p><p>“A flugelhorn? That’s fucking insane,” Jack was saying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. february

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First, I would like to proclaim that I am in not in any way affiliated with the band fun., neither do I know their life story in detail. The stories I have written are merely band headcanons from the top of my head, with the aid of the little biographical resource floating about the internet. These stories are purely _fictional_ (unless, by any chance, they did really occur in real life. I do not take responsibility for these coincidences.) With that being said, I hope you enjoy your read.

**1\.       february**

 

Again, Andrew isn’t quite sure why he is here.

 

The moment he walks into the dimly lit studio (fourth floor on a dingy, liftless apartment building backed into a cul-de-sac), it is the stench of vomit and cigarette smoke and booze that first hits him. He doubles over, his weak laugh escaping from between his lips like a brush of static, and closes his eyes for a split second as though to pick through the knots in his stomach.

 

The second thing that hits him is a drumstick.

 

“Jesus Christ, _Nate_!”

 

Andrew’s nerves become strangely placated. He first half-smiles with newfound relief and then cringes as sudden pain sears into half of his face. He crouches with a hand on the doorframe and another over his eye and slurs through his hello.

 

There are only two other guys in the room, a guy in the ridiculous horn-rimmed specs and the equally ridiculous half-shave wearing rainbow socks and high-topped chucks and is half-sprinting towards him now; and the fellow at the drums with the bad haircut (looking more wasted than concerned) sporting an unnecessary pair of Wayfarers.

 

“You fucking retard,” barks Half-Shave to Nate, who has disappeared behind the drums set, “It could have gouged his eye out.”

 

“Hey it’s okay,” Andrew says though he’s not, he’s nauseated and confused and he feels like Two-Face from the weird tingling in one side of his face, “I’m okay. What a way to break the ice.” He waves over to the drums. “Hey, Nate. You called two nights ago.”

 

Nate’s head appears from underneath a cymbal. He has taken off his sunglasses, his eyes wide and bloodshot but now shimmering with recognition. “Andrew,” He staggers as he gets on his feet, struggling to remember his name. “Andrew Dost! Wow. That was mortifying. Thanks for being able to come. We were just uh, warming up.”

 

“He got hammered. And stupid enough to try the drums,” interjects Rainbow Socks, “I didn’t know that this moron—this small-town boy wonder—is totally incapacitated when faced to play any kind of musical instrument.” He says ‘boy wonder’ like he is about to spit in his face.

 

“Hey shut it, Antonoff.” warns Nate. (Andrew can’t help himself but thinks that Nate is starting to resemble a penguin. A scrawny penguin with a disproportionate head better suited for a taller man.)

 

“Anyway, hey there.” Antonoff puts out a hand. “I am Jack. Jack Antonoff of Steel Train. You can call me Ducky.”

 

“Nice to meet you, Jack.” says Andrew politely, taking his hand. Jack has a firm grip, with fingers of a zealous guitarist, all ridged and blistered at the tips.

 

“Anathallo right? You guys did a killer job the last time we were in Michigan.”

 

“Ex. I left after that gig. They disbanded recently -- it’s been two months or something since.”

 

Jack clucks emphatically. “That’s okay,” Andrew smiles as if to reassure, “We were a concept band experimenting with sounds and all that, and the family was made out of folks who came and left. In the end, all that’s left is the music we made anyway.”

 

“Well, if it comforts you, Sam and I disbanded a mere couple of days ago.”

 

“That’s a real shame. I loved The Format back in high school.”

 

“Thanks.” Nate says this coolly. Andrew isn’t sure if he had just made a compliment or an untimely insult.

 

He totters over to a table where a six-pack case had been ripped apart. “Okay. Let’s start hammering out ideas. This studio may not look like it, but its rent is busting a hole in my wallet.”

 

Andrew is exhausted, his left eyelid is already fluttering out of tempo, and he misses his girls. Okay, his girl and his fat slob of a dog. He thumbs the silver band on his ring finger, thinking of how long this engagement is going to be. _A very, very long one._ He seats himself on a barstool, places his battered flugelhorn case on the table, and begins to list his regrets in his head.

 

“A flugelhorn? That’s fucking insane,” Jack was saying.

 

Jack is nice, but Andrew has never heard of Steel Train.

 

“I’ve never heard of Steel Train,” he says before he can stop himself.

 

“No way! But you are excused because you’re a Michigan boy.” Jack twirls on his barstool and bows, “Welcome to New Jersey. The nicer bit of New Jersey, to be exact. Don’t let the ghetto exterior fool you.”

 

Jack is _very_ nice, despite that half-shave.

 

“Here.” Nate throws some manuscripts across the table, with folded notepaper stapled in between, “These were some of the ideas I had back during The Format days, but we never got the chance to get them all out.”

 

Jack glances at them and looks at him incredulously, “You experiment on expensive manuscript paper? And your handwriting doesn’t even sit against the bar lines. They are fucking all over the place.”

 

“I can’t write music. I’m a lyrics person.”

 

“Who gave you a job in this business?”

 

Andrew pretends to look for a bottle of Jack Daniels in the empty six-pack case.

 

“I’m also not a person to waste time with,” Nate picks up a sheet, “I was thinking if you guys could come up with a sort of instrumentation for this.”

 

He starts to sing. Andrew stops pretending and looks at Nate from across the table like he has just been struck by lightning. Jack raises an eyebrow and folds his arms, but staunchly maintains the pissed-off expression he has on his face.

 

Nate is singing at these weird, irregular intervals… even a child can immediately tell that he is not a seasoned songwriter, let alone one; a starving and desperate musician who has never attended music school and does not understand the fundamental logistics of music itself, but yet insists on staying to do the vocals because he does not have anywhere else to go.

 

The composition of the tune itself was like an eclectic mashup of notes... it had its interesting moments. He buzzes in a low growl, tapping the edge of the table; he slams into a high note in a theatrical shriek and then sucks his breath into into a lilting drawl of spoken poetry. Each section is distinct of its influence, and plucked fresh like a fruit from its tree. His voice bleeds with a certain kind of pain, which Nate manages to somehow translate into an explosive wail.

 

Basically everything that comes out from Nate mouth makes no sense to Andrew.

 

“Ah, well, fuck it.” Nate says finally.

 

Andrew grabs the remaining pieces of paper on the table and looks at Nate in the eye. He had heard of the infamous ‘Ruess effect’ from Sam Mendes when they first met and he had been taken aside to be introduced, and had always wanted to try drowning in the mid-swim of his career just to be saved by understanding it – and he is now sure he is in the close.

 

“I’m in.”


	2. infomercial

**2\.     infomercial**

Nate likes stargazing. It was a lot easier back in Phoenix, where the night skies were clearer and there weren’t as much artificial light clutter and skyscrapers (as the Big Apple. How did they end up in New York again?). Arizona’s twilights basically twinkle with the first diamonds of the sky. _Arizona_ has the nicest night skies.

 

Here in the metropolis, all he sees is blackness set in the orange glow of Times Square and the relentless honking and chugging exhausts of the cars in gridlock clogging up the highway next to their tiny apartment (nicely located above a pub). It depresses him. It also excites him because above the sound of the city coming to life every six o’clock in the morning as he lies in bed with the covers off, he can also hear the sound of the sea of opportunities he is wading in now. Eventually he ( _they_ ) will get to the deep end.

 

Jack likes simpler things, such as ice-cream and the Huffington Post. He also likes lesbians. At least that’s what Nate notices about him – Jack has a lot of lesbian friends (and a pretty, hopefully heterosexual sister). And as if to show this fact off, he has a collection of pro-LGBT tee shirts which he wears, with sleeves scrunched to his collarbones and hem tucked into his trousers. (That’s okay because Jack works out.)

 

Once, Jack suggested naming the band ‘Ice-cream’ and Nate had laughed off his desire to punch him in between the spectacles. Jack had this incredibly annoying smarmy kind of laugh after he says something he thinks is funny and it tends to set Nate off to want to physically _hurt_ somebody.

 

Nate has anger management issues. Had. He’s not sure. Every now and then he believes he is at peace with the world and its stupidity - but like all human beings, he has a trigger. It is a shapeshifting, arbitrary trigger ranging from noisy chewers to more serious things like Jack Antonoff’s face. Okay, maybe that was a hyperbole and a half, but still, Nate’s intolerance to most people (ultimately a certain bandmate) has been declared incurable by the third wheel (Andrew).

 

They had a long night performing at the pub downstairs, and Nate had exhausted his energy from the six tequila shots he had earlier on ad libbing to a deadpan crowd. So at the end of the day, all Nate wanted to do was to freefall into his improvised futon ( _see._ a foldable mattress on the floor) and eat the chicken strips he had smuggled in a paper napkin.

 

Unfortunately, their apartment had only three rooms. A bathroom, a kitchenette conjoined to the living room and a single bedroom with two beds. Andrew had volunteered to take the couch because he is a TV junkie and the small portable box television with the six channels and no cable in the living room was sufficient to tend to his infomercial fetish.

 

Jack enters the room eating cereal from a mug.

 

“Your crunching is driving me fucking nuts. Isn’t there milk in the fridge?”

 

“I can never make up my mind whether to put the milk or cereal in the bowl first. So I end up eating the cereal as it is.”

 

Nate groans and turns his face into his pillow and says something like _why am I even talking to you._

 

“Boy, you sure are your usual self tonight, times a thousand.”

 

“Why are you here?”

 

“Because I’m your roommate!” Jack laughs. Nate’s fists ball up and Jack quickly adds, “But in all seriousness, this rare face-to-face moment with you is for me to tell you that you smashed it tonight.”

 

“If you’re talking about my alcohol problem, you have forgotten my other addiction,” Nate sits up in his bed and lights a cigarette. He offers Jack a stick.

 

“No thanks. Those things colour your teeth,” Jack wrinkles his nose. “You know what I’m talking about. Tonight for the first time, we weren’t singing covers of The Format.”

 

“They aren’t covers, Antonoff. _I_ was in the band.”

 

“Yeah. Yeah. But you aren’t anymore. Your band no longer exist, Nate.”

 

“Fuck off, Jack.”

 

“So did you think ‘Benson Hedges’ was a hit?”

 

“I don’t know. Did you?” He exhales a sheet of smoke.

 

“Uh huh,” Jack says distractedly. “So we covered better rock numbers tonight, but when we ended our gig with an original… did you see how the crowd actually reacted?”

 

“I didn’t notice.”

 

“You didn’t because you’re wasted. You’re always wasted.”

 

Nate is now staring out of the window at the 2 a.m. sky tinged in orange, like a difficult carpet stain. “I was never like this, you know.”

 

“You perform your best when you’ve been stealing alcohol from the bar.” says Jack pointedly.

 

“I love New York, but I hate how damn hard it is to believe that we are still making ends meet as _adequate bar entertainment_. We are living off pub scraps and you got us this fucking cheerless apartment because your semi-successful sister is shelling out funds for us. It’s humiliating.” Nate gently taps the dirt-crusted window pane. “It’s even more humiliating that it’s already been a month and—and we, scratch that—I have achieved nothing.”

 

“That’s not true. I’ve been seeing nothing but great ideas the past month.”

 

“What’s more revolting than you being sarcastic is you being genuine. I fucking hate New York,” Nate contradicts in an almost sighing scowl.

 

Jack sits beside Nate on the bed and says, “Cough it up, Ruess. You hate it because there aren’t any stars here.”

 

Nate turns to look at him, looking as if he has been slapped across the face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

 

“Let’s say somebody has been writing lyrics of constellations since forever. Yeah it’s cheesy. But there’s nothing wrong with a little star fixation.”

 

Nate looks as if he is about to hit him, but instead he takes a drag of smoke between his clipped fingers and exhales, slowly. “When I was little, my dad was hospitalized for what felt like a really, really long time. I think it was some sort of cancer. Whatever it was, there was a day I thought I had lost him.”

 

Jack’s stops smiling and the twinkle in his eyes diminishes. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

 

“I’m not big on prayers. Never been brought up religious or anything, but I was fed a staple of Peter Pan. Wendy and the Lost Boys, all that. So I wished my heart out on a star.”

 

All Jack could muster was a “wow”.

 

“In a nutshell, he got better and I had believed in stars since. Call me crazy.” Nate twiddles the cigarette between a finger and his thumb. “Ever since then, I always had been utterly phobic to the thought of losing anyone I love to death. But stars… stars were always there to guide me through some sort of unspoken wisdom.” He softens, visibly. “It’s good to believe in something, even if that something isn’t yourself.”

 

There is a silence permeated by automobiles on the highway whizzing into the dead of the night. Finally Jack pipes up, “Well, I’m hoping for your sanity that you keep wishing on stars. Because,” He stands up to look at him, “I hate to admit this, but you write some of the most honest lyrics out there, and they are deep. They are fucking brilliant. And you were _something_ tonight, Nate. I saw it with my own eyes when you stepped up that platform and opened that fucking huge mouth of yours. And maybe when you finally get up on your feet and find yourself some self-esteem, we can actually take fragment of _believeable_ and achieve something greater out of it. Here. In New York.” And with that, he leaves the room.

 

“If you decide to title our debut album ‘Stars’ I will _fucking kill you_.” he adds from the living room.

 

For the first time in weeks, Nate Ruess laughs and makes a decision.

 

Jack leans on the couch on which Andrew has fallen into sound sleep on, watching the infomercial on steam mops that has just come on. He wonders if he and Nate had finally broken the invisible barrier in their communication but then again, he remembers that Nate had those six shots.

 

He shakes his head but smiles, and decides to order a steam mop. After all, this apartment deserves a little better. Just like themselves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'Stars' (both the original and the acoustic versions) was on replay on my iTunes, so it turned out to be a weird kind of drabble, initiating Nate's character development - hopefully?


	3. green monster

**3\.    green monster**

  

It has been about three months since the formation of the group (“Fun, period.” Andrew contemplates, “People are going to have a hard time googling us.”) and all sorts of new-bandmate formalities have been lost in the black hole of familiarity and never again recovered.

 

Andrew has been flying back to Michigan more of the late because the long distance has been making him homesick. Jack tirelessly bounces to and fro between New Jersey and New York as if he has to choose between his bandmates from Steel Train and his favourite sister’s fashion launches in the form of whimsical runway events. Nate, eligible bachelor Nate on the other hand, stayed at his parents’ place in Phoenix most of the time, eating out of boxes and writing songs in his basement.

 

And on certain days, they gather in their tiny apartment in New York to wring out their creative juices. Days such as today.

 

Andrew is making a repellent looking smoothie in the blender, and as Jack glances over he sees spinach leaves and half a piece of ginger. He shudders. “I knew you were a health nut, but even this is going too far, Dost.”

 

“I reek of booze and Doritos from last night.” He lifts his arms and sniffs. “Yikes. Time to bounce back on the regimen.”

 

“Make sure you leave some for me. Also, I hope you know I’m kidding. I’m going to detox with an apple. I have a massive headache.”

 

“Where’s Nate?” He spoons a generous amount of honey into the blender.

 

“He’s still in bed. Andrew, I believe he’s Satan in disguise.”

 

“What makes you so sure of that?” Andrew laughs and licks the spoon. “Also, do you Jews even believe in Satan?”

 

“He wakes up in the middle of the night chanting mantras,” Jack leans against the stove, “He sleeptalks in the _devil’s language_. You’ve got to let me have the couch.”

 

“The man’s made up of words and the need to self-damage. So, he _dreams_ in words as well.” Andrew clicks the button on the blender and it starts whirring and mixing the contents into bright green goop. They don’t talk until the blender stops whirring.

 

Jack mouths _that’s disgusting_ as Andrew pours the mixture into a sundae glass they got from the dollar shop. “Also, as much as I believe in his talent, I doubt he has anything else that could ever tie me down to him,”  he states, without thinking, “I’m sure I’ve got better things to do.”

 

“Never make promises you know you can’t keep.” Is that a forewarning? Jack isn’t sure. “How is it that bandmates like us don’t cling onto our lead vocalists the way, I don’t know – the guys of Panic! cling onto Brendon?”

 

“It’s just Nate,” Jack chuckles, watching Andrew attempting to down the smoothie. “Basically the moment we first met when we were touring together, I had called him a dick in his face. He’s just that bad on first impression.”

 

“Maybe _you’ve_ got issues, calling people dicks in their faces.” A small hiccup escapes his lips.

 

“What did you think of him the first time?”

 

“Well,” Andrew stops trying to drink and picks up a piece of cucumber instead, “I loved listening to The Format and I had been a follower ever since they started. I knew he was a lyric wizard. But I didn’t get to meet him until he came to Michigan on tour and I was assigned to them as their keyboardist.”

 

“You were excited to meet him?”

 

“I was totally hyped out. Had to take him around Michigan the first day. It was snowing and Michigan isn’t pretty in winter. He was basically swearing and shivering in his one-layer, as thin as a poor man’s wallet. He was literally the North Pole.”

 

They laugh (cruelly) at this pun.

 

“Beside that,” Andrew continues, “He didn’t actually talk much. I guess he was like stoned most of the time? I’m not sure but he never talked during car rides, it was just Sam going on and on about, I don’t know, the fucking wombats he saw at the zoo or something. Come to think of it, he was probably stoned too.”

 

“Hah. Never really liked that asshole either.” It is weird how Jack was being succinct and responsive; it’s like he just wanted to _listen_ today. People don’t usually let him talk.

 

“Then we played at St. Andrews that night and basically Nate transformed into a kind of creature, a phoenix— you know, rising from the ashes. He literally took the audience’s breaths away. I guess even though we didn’t click as much as I wanted, I’ve always respected him as a performer since then.”

 

“I guess,” says Jack, deep in thought.

 

“He belongs to the stage. He was always meant to be out there, performing. You take the stage away from him and he becomes an empty shell. An empty shell of a man with an ache in his throat and nowhere else to put his words.”

 

“You have a flair for expression, Dostman.” Jack playfully whacks him on the shoulder. He suddenly becomes a little more serious. “But you’re right. He may be despicable but I can’t deny that I stayed to do this new band thing because he had impressed me from the start. Most of the time even in between his mental breakdowns and inebriated sessions of low self-esteem… I still envy him, y’know? For still being able to do what he does with that kind of shit mentality. But like I said,” he runs his fingers along the edge of the stove, “I’m still looking for a reason to tie myself down to him.”

 

“Of all people to be jealous of me... you, Jack?”

 

Andrew and Jack whip around to find Nate in his sweatpants at the door of his bedroom, absentmindedly scratching his elbow with his teeth bared into a sleepy sort of grin. Jack looks flustered, and Andrew greets cheerily, “Afternoon, Nate! How long were you there for?”

 

“I heard someone swear and I thought, if anybody was going to start a cussfest I’m not going to be left out of it,” Nate yawns, now scratching his stomach, “Anyway, that is one fucking gross looking smoothie, Dost.”

 

“I call it the Green Monster. You are welcome to try it,”

 

The three laugh (Jack, uncomfortably) in unison and Nate mumbles, “Thanks, guys.” which Andrew feels was said in hope that no one actually heard it, and this makes him laugh even harder with a brighter kind of hope.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really enjoyed writing this banter, despite the lack of structure and everything (yeah I had an especially tiring day!) The Antonoff-Dost relationship is sublime, from what I've gathered so far.


	4. pixie

**4\.         pixie**

 

When Jack announced that his sister was back in New York and had voiced her desire visit their ‘musical nuthouse’, Nate became strangely flustered. He has only seen her in the polaroids that Jack carries around in his wallet. A petite, whitewashed frame in stripy frock cinched at the waist. Soft brown doe-eyes ‘like Arabica roast’ - an Antonoff heritage. She smiles at the camera with the sides of her closed mouth slightly turned upwards - not too sugar-coated or over-the-top angelic, but Nate feels it is a sort of objectively in-the-moment smile, which is great.

 

So far he has already several hypothetical impressions of her in his head, but Nate does not want to jump to any conclusions before meeting her (as he thinks of this his heart beats a little faster). Also suddenly, he becomes rather conscious of himself (“Are the suspenders a little too much? Are fringed moccasins out of season?”) and if Jack didn’t know any better, he would have assumed that Nate had finally crawled out from under a rock to discover that his outfits were a little more than passé.

 

In fact, Nate isn’t sure if he knows how to talk to a girl anymore. It has been a while since his last, who had attempted electrocuting herself in a filled bathtub to draw his attention away from his songwriting ‘trance’. He looks at himself in the mirror and decides to finally remove the shrink wrap from the tub of hair gel that he hasn’t gotten the chance to use yet.

 

She floats into their studio like a dream (Nate doesn’t understand how this is even humanly possible).

 

“I’m not really sure I understand how you guys actually enjoy living here,” she treads her way carefully around a half-built dollhouse. Her steps are light and feathery, like a _pixie_ , Nate thinks as he chews on his hoodie drawstring while watching her.

 

“We actually don’t,” says Jack, who has just exited the bathroom, “But it’s enough.”

 

“Thank you for helping us find a place to stay.” Andrew’s all gracious and charming again. Nate feels an irrational stab of annoyance by this. He decides he is going to keep his mouth shut this time.

 

Rachel sleeps in Nate’s bed that night. Of course, Jack gives him the boot first and claims her, being the slightly obsessive brother he is. Nate does not object to this and quietly rolls out his sleeping bag beside Andrew’s couch-bed.

 

He sits on his sleeping bag in his shorts and singlet that night playing a muted video game on his Playstation 2 as he listens to the Andrew burst into peals of laughter with the Antonoffs in their room – _his_ room – as though they have been fucking friends for all their lives.

 

“So we were up at Salt Lake for a casual outdoor gig and it was Halloween that night – so Andrew here decided he would get up on stage dressed in sixteenth century robes – you know, with the ridiculous white aristocrat wig—like _Mozart_ —“

 

“Jack, you went as a unicorn,” reminds Andrew.

 

“Nate’s was something though,” Jack wheezes. “He was a stunning female cheerleader. The crowd was nonplussed until he opened his mouth - that’s how convincing he was.”

 

Nate’s thumb jams a button and his avatar skids across the court and hits the pixelated ball hoop stand.

 

“Where’s he now anyway?” asks Rachel. Nate hits pause and decides to have a smoke at the balcony and maybe try to spot a planet in the sky, just to get away from any further social interaction. He’s not feeling up to it. Besides, it’s _Rachel_.

 

But Jack (fuck Jack) decides to clear a space in the living room to lay out a Twister mat because Rachel had apparently boasted of how she was at the top of her Pilates class and Jack had wagered that he would beat her in a game of Twister and prove her an empty vessel. And now they are persuading him to join in, we-need-to-kick-her-ass and stop-being-a-thistle-in-a-rose-garden.

 

Nate doesn’t explain that Twister is a game for horny teenagers who just want an excuse to get into each others’ pants, but Nate’s coy and Rachel’s pretty – so what’s the harm in playing a stupid game… right?

 

The final showdown between Rachel and Nate is inevitable. Jack gets out first because he lost his footing when attempting a hand on yellow (kicking Nate in the temple in the process) and he sour grapes his way onto the couch like a petulant child watching his sister dominate the game; a plot twist. Andrew hangs on a bit more because he is leggy and his hands are steady, but he isn’t flexible enough to tuck his legs behind his ears so he rolls off in defeat after about eight rounds.

 

Rachel’s knee is in Nate’s face, and she has another leg beneath his abdomen (it touches where his navel is and he sucks in his breath in response, suddenly anxious). He feels her hair tickling the sole his feet and he tries not to laugh.

 

“Left leg on green, Nate.”

 

“Attaboy,” she says, her voice strained but filled with good humor.

 

He squints to see where the nearest green is, and he realizes in a sort of confused thrill that to get to green, he would eventually end up in a posture in which he would have to basically _straddle_ her. He also soon realizes that this position was painful and awkward and made worse by her brother watching less than two feet away.

 

Rachel falls.

 

“DOWN!” shouts Jack in ambiguous glee.

 

Nate is staring at her knees, that had just collapsed beneath him. They are rather nice looking sort of knees, albeit slightly knobby. He imagines what it is like to kiss them.

 

“Um,” Rachel is saying, “Nate. You won. You can get off now after you’re done staring at my legs.”

 

Jack makes a noise like a provoked coyote. Nate gets off his knees and looks at her sheepishly. “That’s embarrassing. Winning Twister, I mean.”

 

“You’re a contortionist! That was insane.”

 

Andrew looks at Jack who looks at Rachel, then Nate, and then back at Andrew. Andrew mouths something and then says, “Jack and I are going downstairs to get us some drinks.” Jack looks anxious but says _yeah okay we won’t take a moment._

 

“I’ll go with you,” says Nate in alarm.

 

But they’re gone. _Sonofabitches,_ Nate clenches his teeth.

 

Rachel slides on the couch, her hair spreading behind her head like a shimmery halo. “So. I haven’t had the chance to actually talk to you. How is my brother treating you?”

 

“He’s a bastard,” says Nate unintentionally, nervously.

 

“I don’t doubt that. He’s a gem of a bastard,” she laughs. “On a more serious note, how’s the songwriting going? Jack says you’re precocious.”

 

“He said that?” Disbelief in a smile. “I’m not sure. It’s kind of all over the place at the moment, but I’m sure we will eventually get somewhere.”

 

“I’ve listened to some of the demos. They are promising.”

 

“Thanks.” Nate doesn’t want to talk about his paling career. “So, you’re a fashion designer?”

 

“Yeah. According to a recent article, I ‘design clothes for manic pixie girls’. Apparently Zooey Deschanel had expressed her interest in my line. I’m actually quite excited.”

 

“That’s great. It’s also cool ‘cos… you’re kind of like a pixie yourself. Very um, befitting.”

 

Rachel shrugs and slumps back on the couch, suddenly a little disillusioned. “I’m a designer. Designers aren’t supposed to look like anything. We churn out clothing for mannequins and catwalk models to wear but we are faceless geniuses in the heads of the consuming public. Did anybody care what Coco Chanel or Vera Wang wore to the red carpet? Slit my throat if they do.”

 

Nate bites his lower lip and finds himself desperately _needing_ her to smile again. “I guess when you say that, I can actually relate to you in terms of the music industry.”

 

“To be honest, I like this level of fame. It’s kind of ‘in-between’ as I’d call it,” she turns her head to look at him and grins, “I get to be sufficiently obscure and yet receive recognition and money from the business. I also get to spend as much time as I can with my baby brother and wear pajamas out without needing to give a shit as to who's watching disapprovingly.”

 

Nate wants to run his fingers through her hair and kiss her, right there.

 

“Do you like karaoke? I know a good bar in the city.”

 

He says he loves karaoke and he would love to go with her one day, and Rachel gets excited and takes his hands in her small ones and says she feels they are going to be good friends. He’s not sure if it’s just a formality for girls to be so cheerful and engaging and agreeable at first encounter. But it’s a good start.

 

That very night, he presses his fingers (where she touched as she briefly held them) against his lips and thinks that maybe, just maybe his search is over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nachel! 'nuff said.


	5. symmetry

**5\.         symmetry**

 

“I have a confession,” says Jack, always the first to make his voice heard. “I fucking hate Match Point. I know, I know – who the heck hates Woody Allen films?”

 

“I have a proposal,” Nate raises a hand, “You’re just bitter because Scarlett Johansson is hotter than you.” He is shot down with a glare.

 

Andrew looks up from his Macbook. “I still can’t believe you dated her.”

 

“Times have changed,” Jack looks around the circle, “I have finally stopped dedicating songs to her, but she hasn’t stopped getting Golden Globes nominations.”

 

“Golden Globes is nothing,” Nate points out, “compared to an Academy Award. Besides, she obviously doesn’t care you bitching about her because she’s way more famous than you.”

 

“What was she like?” asks Andrew interestedly. “Before she got, um, busty and into guys from Tinseltown?”

 

They are sitting in the largest circle (or triangle) they can possible manage to form on the peeling parquet-lined floor of their living room. Just talking. Talking is as normal as it gets on off-days. They are no longer bothered to hit the clubs or drink themselves merry and sprawling all over pavements and rooftops till the first rays of the sun hits them right in middle of a hangover. Those were stories from the past, stories they ought to laugh over in private, stories they don’t need to tell their future children.

 

“She was the sweetest, until she made it as a cover girl for Vogue. But she had also been competitive from the start, opportunistic - always getting ahead of herself. In that sense I guess she rightly deserves all the fame she’s getting now.”

 

“You don’t have to say that if you don’t mean it.” Andrew tells him.

 

“You’re right. She’s a bitch.”

 

“Is forgiveness out of the question?” Nate smiles through his concern, rocking gently back and forth on crossed legs.

 

“I still screen the cast listing of blockbusters so I don’t have to sit through two hours of grueling torture at the movies while reliving my heartbreaks,” he looks up through his semi-fogged glasses and forces a smile, “But I really have buried the hatchet with her.”

 

(He swears under his breath but everybody hears it and pretends to believe him.)

 

“Well,” Nate starts, “If I had to pick one out of the long list of things of things that I don’t want to _need_ but I do, it would be these fuckin’ smokes.” He rattles his box of Marlboros. “But if I go a day without them you might want to tie me down to the bed.”

 

“That’s something we would really like you to quit,” Andrew wrinkles his nose, “How does your voice even stay intact with you inhaling toxic fumes twenty-four-seven?”

 

“I don’t know. I compensate by drinking gallons more water and jogging around the balcony.”

 

“Don’t think it really works that way. Your throat is insuranced for about a thousand bucks. Lose that and we lose the band you started.” Jack reminds him.

 

“If I didn’t smoke, I won’t have been churning out songs at this rate,” Nate retaliates, “But I’d like to think I might quit one day. Not soon. But one day. I need a reason.”

 

“What better reason do you need,” Andrew turns his Macbook around to a Google images page filled with thumbnails of blackened lungs, tumours, necrotic tissue _et cetera_ , “…besides these?”

 

“They don’t scare me,” Nate leans back into a stretch, “I live in the present. Drive a freight train into me and I might run to save myself but fuck the future, fuck it.”

 

Nate has been having a bad week, but he tries to not let it affect how he treats the others. Instead, his feelings become subconsciously channeled out into his words in a torrent of cynicism and expletives instead so Andrew and Jack never have to guess when to close the windows to a topic. Jack offers his feet for Nate to distractedly kick aside with his own.

 

Andrew speaks up. “I had a medical checkup the other day. The doctor tells me I have excessive levels of uric acid buildup in my body.”

 

“What the fuck does that even mean?” Nate sits up, “Are you dying?”

 

“When did you find out?” demands Jack, sitting up straighter.

 

“About a month ago. Yeah, I didn’t think you guys noticed.”

 

“Wait, why didn’t you tell us straight after?”

 

“It’s nothing too serious. Basically, I am genetically programmed with uric acid metabolism that worsens with age,” explains Andrew, his voice too calm. “The accumulation in my joints right now can theoretically burn through my cartilage and give me premature arthritis if I ever let my guard slip. Let ‘er rip.” He adds, lamely.

 

“Jesus,” says Jack.

 

“So the doctor advised me to cut back on meat and get out more often. I figured out I should just eat none at all.”

 

“Wait,” Nate stares, “You’re going vegetarian?”

 

Andrew nods.

 

“To fit this into the context of our topic, I guess I’d really like it if I didn’t have to do this. Being a rabbit for the rest of my life,” his cornflower-blue eyes disappear beneath his lowered lashes, “But if I can control my diet, by the time my joints start to erode I would be within the right statistical age parameters to actually _have_ eroded joints.”

 

The silence after allows these words to sink in. Nate stubs the cigarette that had been hanging from the corner of his clenched mouth onto the parquet, wishing like _violence_ it is a shard of glass he’s gripping in between his fingers. Slicing himself to the bone of his knuckle would hurt a lot less than this… this. Jack’s shoulders slump so his head lolls downwards and his eyes deviate towards his (twitching) toes. Andrew just smiles and turns back to the Macbook screen that illuminates the deepening contours of his tired, tired face. Jack looks at him briefly and thinks, wow, how is he still afloat the sea of his own fatigue and hard luck? And then remembers Andrew is only twenty-three and thinks that he is incredible.

 

Nate must have shared a similar thought bubble because he crawls on his knees and props his forehead against Andrew’s shoulder. The crook of his arm hits the edge of the Macbook screen as he leans forwards.

 

Andrew exclaims. “No need to be dramatic!”

 

“Fuck you,” Nate snarls, “Fuck you and your it’s-alrights.”

 

(If Nate’s the half-empty glass and Jack’s the one that is half-full, Andrew is the glass with melting ice cubes and the inconclusive water level. Probably with a pinch of salt as interesting as his sense of humour. And a tall drinking straw because he is, well, tall.)

 

Jack may have a short attention span and a tendency to caricaturize humans in the form of inanimate objects, but he knows that he doesn’t need to further accessorize the conversation this time. He reaches to pat Andrew’s head.

 

At midnight, Rachel walks in to find the lights still on (she frowns and recites a lengthy dressing-down at the back of her head for the next morning). But what she sees later stops her in her tracks and a small warmth trickles into her heart… she decides to leave the three grown men boyishly huddled, fast asleep, against the couch on the floor, legs entwined and breathing slow and harmonious. The parquet crunches as Nate shifts contentedly against Andrew’s shoulder. Jack murmurs a little, but Andrew, who is sandwiched in between the two with his arms crossed against his chest, had soundlessly drifted off in his exhaustion. Nevertheless, Rachel notices a small smile etched on his lips. 

 

As she reaches to turn off the lights, Rachel hopes that they aren’t dreaming because, well, their overworked brains deserve a timeout.

 

If they are, she hopes they are good dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have decided to focus on writing up domestic scenes for this chapter and the coming instalments (because they are important before I blow up any situations). This drabble was intended to be a little fluffier and less angsty... but I guess I can't help it if my mind strays out of control. Also, this isn't my best... hopefully the next chapter is a little more fulfilling. :)
> 
> P/S: no, the real Andrew Dost, I'm sure, is as fit as a fiddle and does not have this fictitious condition.


	6. vandal (the reversal)

**6.         vandal (the reversal)**

 

Recently, the living room has been a great place for them to throw tantrums (direct or indirect) in. It has been turned upfront into a music studio over the months as it is gradually filled with a clusterfuck of Andrew’s eight favourite instruments and Jack’s amp collection (their DIY dollhouse is draped with wires all over – Andrew sees this as the first indicator of overcrowding). Jack has also moved in about a third of his Star Wars collection in a mobile bookshelf and an old coffee table they had scavenged from the apartment building’s lost-and-found, on which he draws an imaginary line between space for their Chinese takeaways and stacks of books Andrew wants to reread.

 

Nate doesn’t have a lot of stuff because he likes to think that he’s a man of very little need for luxury, so all he has lying around is his laptop for online games and a personal coffee mug that says ‘I’d Rather Be In Arizona’. Sometimes as he lies on the couch with his feet folded beneath his lumbar (so as to accommodate the portable TV that has been unprioritized in terms of floor space value) and hits the keys to O2 Jam to the sound of ceramic breaking on the pavement as Andrew stands at the balcony with a basin of cups from Goodwill.

 

“I’m not sure what your problem is.” Nate calls over to the figure bent over the railing as he hears another cup smash ten floors below.

 

“It’s the Sahara fucking desert in here,” Andrew wipes the sweat off his brow, “And Jack forgot to refill the ice tray.”

 

“Get used to it. You aren’t in Michigan.”

 

“Fun fact: Michigan is still freezing in the middle of May,” he drops another cup and watches it break into a hundred pieces on cement. “When Jack comes back from the store, I hope one of these lands on his numbskull head.”

 

“You’re normally not this agitated over trivial matters.”

 

Andrew normally tolerates most things, but if one were to assume from his deceptively olive skin, they wouldn’t have guessed that he despises the heat most of all (“it’s like being slowly braised in an oven with a broken thermostat” he moans).

 

“I’m not sure if one could call this a trivial matter.”

 

Nate looks up to Andrew unbuttoning his shirt.

 

“Listen.” He maxes the volume of his laptop. The electronic tune of the game resounds through the slow heat of the room.

 

“That’s real catchy.”

 

“Walking the dog, ‘cos the cat is dead!” He hums a subsequent tune, excitement suddenly dancing in his eyes. He gets off the couch and makes his way towards the electronic keyboard in the corner and presses a few keys, experimentally. Andrew, amused, watches him growing exasperated as he repeatedly jams a sequence of discordant keys, his attempt to get a cohesive tune out of it backfiring from the start.

 

“Fuck this.” he says. “Get this. The tune basically goes dum-dum-dum bom bom. Did you get that? Dum dee dum-dum bom dee dum. Walking the dog, ‘cos the cat is dead.”

 

“Honestly, all I got from it was that you’d walk your cat on a leash before the dog. Which, in New York, would be just bizarre. And depressing.” He walks over anyways and plays the tune on the keyboard. Nate nods animatedly and claps his hands.

 

“Keep note of that bit in that head of yours. Nailed the chorus.”

 

“I haven’t seen you this happy in a while.” Andrew smiles in spite of the heat.

 

Nate purses his lips and drops his hands into his lap. “Actually I don’t know…”

 

Andrew asks what it is. He says it monotonously, hoping it isn’t going to be another one-sided rant session (which he seems to be subjected to a lot lately. Maybe he should talk more and listen less. He doesn’t want to come off as an asshole though.)

 

“It’s about Jack. Not really. I think it’s me. I don’t know if I’m going to register as narcissistic…”

 

Andrew says that it’s okay, but he isn’t feeling up to it.

 

“Most of the time I tolerate the way he goads me and tackles me into a wall, but sometimes I wonder if there’s something wrong with me to be this constantly _roughhoused_.”

 

“I can tell him to stop.” Andrew tries half-heartedly.

 

“It’s not that. It’s okay if he doesn’t like me much, but when I think about it, if this band goes within public radar one day – we need to at least get along. For continuity. Mind you, he initiates the conversation most of the time. I just choose to dumb them down.”

 

“You think you’re conscious of yourself being the problem.” Andrew cocks an eyebrow.

 

“Yeah. I really don’t know what to talk to him about most of the time. Thing is, I don’t know what to talk to _people_ about most of the time. I’m a social misfit with massive trust issues. Normally people try to be nice to me because I come across as recluse; but I run, Andrew,” he pauses, “I run from people because I fucking refuse to be cared for. But Jack. Jack doesn’t seem to try. He runs sentences like I don’t have feelings. And I guess, that complicates what I feel about our relationship… for some reason I find myself _trusting_ him.”

 

Andrew feels the heat closing in on his throat and lungs. He then decides that his brain isn’t the boss of him. At least not today. “But by telling me this… aren’t you trusting me by saying that? Even though I am actually fucking _trying_ to listen to you fulminate?”

 

Nate blinks.

 

“I… don’t know what that means.”

 

Andrew picks up another cup and moves towards the balcony.

 

“Fuck it, Andrew. Of course I trust you. What are you doing?”

 

“I’m not sure, Nate, but sometimes I feel that this man is more of a two-man waged war than three. But this isn’t about me.”

 

“You’re not making sense,” defends Nate, though Andrew’s words stung glaringly of self-pity. “This is a weird turnabout.”

 

“You need to sort out your priorities. And your fucked up feelings. I don’t know what people have done to you in the past but,” Andrew whips around, a machine gun, and Nate sees his tight jawline and brow flecked with beads of sweat, “It’s not others who need to try for you Nate, it’s _you_ who need to put in that effort. For yourself. For relationships. For _music_. It’s all you have. _We_ are all you have now.”

 

 _Do you think I don’t know that,_ Nate hears his own voice rise by an octave, _who are you, how dare you tell me what I already know, no fuck it all who the fuck am I_

At that moment, Nate tastes blood in his mouth. He withdraws at the shock of the coppery taste on his tongue, and Andrew stops being _not Andrew_ and stares at his face in open-mouthed concern.

 

“Are you okay?” is the first thing the real Andrew says.

 

Nate lies through painted teeth. As Andrew moves in (to inspect, as he would in most situations that require first-aid. Nate hopes that he isn’t going to kiss him, it’s weird, the taste in his mouth is weird, Andrew’s weird…), Jack enters the apartment. He looks at them (buttons undone and skin slick) and utters something, something like _get a room guys_ and _it smells of gay simmered in Saturday’s heatwave_ and proceeds to stock the pantry with canned fruit.

 

“You’re bleeding from the nose like a waterfall.” Andrew sounds like he’s about to laugh. His eyes on the other hand, are conflictingly apologetic.

 

“Open all the windows.” Nate says, turning away to lick away the evidence of his sentience. “The heat is making me angry as fuck.”

 

This is perhaps the biggest white lie he’s ever told. He’s not sure of the extent white lies can get – are they equal to that of actual lies if they are discovered? Would he still be burnt on a stake? – he shrugs off  the speculation and the memory of the strange look in Andrew’s eyes. Nate decides to not remember this particular day.

 

He doesn’t like people getting used to him. It scares him (but then again, Nate is scared of many things).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been my favourite chapter so far. I got to acclimatise myself to the newer rant-style that I like so much. Also I love how Nate seems to find himself more connected to Andrew (in terms of friendship-but-not-quite-there-yet), and in the process of doing so I'd like to imagine how Nate might have needed to defend himself from Andrew's bursts of bad temper and non-reason from time to time, instead of defending himself from, well, himself.
> 
> also this was very loosely inspired from one of the 100 fun.fics on tumblr, just so you note!
> 
> PS: for those who didn't know, I've read somewhere that instead of 'night' in Walking The Dog, they were deciding on 'cat' instead. Thank goodness they changed it.


	7. beanstalk

**7\.         beanstalk**

 

Sometimes, Jack tries too hard.

 

Rachel knows this best of all, because it was her who pried her five-year-old brother’s fingers from a tube of superglue after he spent an hour crying over a broken family candelabrum which mum has said was ‘impossible to rescue now, let it go Jacky’. She worries at first that he might die crushed underfoot by the big boots of society because he’s a pansy. By the time she realized that he had overshot her in height (made stagnant by the early end of puberty), she made peace with the fact that Jack is totally capable of taking care of himself, both physically and mentally.

 

You see, Jack can be a little thoughtless sometimes. This coupled with his innate sense of kindness towards everything that breathes and moves… of course Rachel still finds herself holding on to the same fragment of worry.

 

Back in middle school, Jack had always sat at the back of classrooms, constructing fortresses out of textbooks and doodling horribly misrepresented caricatures of the homeroom teacher on his desk behind Biology 101. School wasn’t interesting. School was filled with adults like his Aunt Grace who were born to terrorize the world with their formidable presence. School was also annexed by coke-snorters and nose-pickers and self-proclaimed MILFs and emaciated drama queens who pushed the pudgier kids around, or kids with acne, or kids at the top of their classes who basically did their homework.

 

Jack did his best to stay away from the aforementioned population. He was not one to go out looking for trouble. He went to school at eight in the morning, ate a sandwich for lunch, watched his classmates hurl spitballs at each other when the teacher turns his back, occasionally attended after-school basketball practice and then went home in the big yellow school bus that arrived at exactly three-fifteen. It was really very simple.

 

It wasn’t that he didn’t have any friends – he did; there were the average joes like Kevin Baxter and Stuart Moseby who sat with him during lunchtime. They talked about girls, the crap school cafeteria food, but most of the time, they talked music. Kevin and Stuart didn’t play music because they had dedicated their post-homework hours to their Gameboys, but they too listened to the radio, and were able to list off more than five songs by The Smashing Pumpkins and R.E.M. (respectively) off the top of their heads. Jack was more than happy to make mixtapes for them, and sometimes he added outros that were recordings of his electric solo.

 

It wasn’t until he turned thirteen (Jack had just received an acceptance letter from the school of his dreams – a _private_ one - in New York and was starting to ease off in classes) when Stuart finally decided to come out. When Jack saw him walking down the hallway hand-in-hand with one of the school’s lesser-known quarterbacks, it was like seeing a stun cloud drift through a sea of people.

 

The only thought that crossed Jack’s mind was “That’s actually really cool. To be able to make people stop just to look at you, without needing to bully them into doing it.”

 

Jack didn’t think about it any further until Kevin called out to him, telling him to ‘get Stuart the hell away from them bastards beating him up in the boys’ locker room’. Jack ran, like a bullet, and when he arrived panting at the scene, the only thing he registered in the light at the end of the tunnel was a half-naked Stuart hunched against the lockers, his face bashed in and eyes blue-black and the foolscap taped on his trembling chest that had ‘FAGGOT’ scrawled in ugly, black dry-erase.

 

That afternoon, Shira Antonoff got a call from the school which made her drop into a chair and start to cry because amidst the confusion, she could only make out the words ‘your son’ and ‘fistfight’ and ‘suspension’. She had pleaded that her sweet, sweet son would _never_   lift his hand to anything that breathed or moved. The school said _sorry, but it has been done, we’re sending him home now._

 

Jack came home that day with bruised fists and a look of quiet pride on his face.

 

====

 

Jack hasn’t changed that much. He might have, as a child, cried over a broken candlestick, and then broken the faces of homophobes with his own two fists the week after his bar mitzvah – but he is still, in fact, the same person.

 

Rachel is watching a campy Adam Sandler film on Netflix with Nate and Andrew, when Jack bursts into the room in what appear to be a long blonde wig, a scanty dress and fishnet stockings. Under the dimmed lighting, Nate raises an eyebrow and asks _where the fuck have you been_ and _what’s with the drag queen thing, you look like shit._

 

“Don’t fuck with me, Ruess,” Jack spits and storms into the bedroom. Rachel pauses the movie, suddenly alarmed by this unusual show of defiance, and follows him. Andrew is heard telling Nate in the background, “That was not cool.”

 

“Jack? Jack! What’s your problem?” she reaches for the wall switch and gasps when she sees Jack under the fluorescence, “The hell happened to you?”

 

Jack’s dress is torn down the torso, exposing bruised skin, and his stockings are ripped and bloodied like his legs. The area around his mouth is purple, botched and swollen, and his nose crusted with blood.

 

“Were you mugged? Jesus, where were you fooling around at this time?” Rachel rushes to the cabinet where they keep their first-aid kit and hustles Jack to sit on the bed so she can nurse his wounds.

 

“No. I got thrown down a stairwell by some guy I swear I didn’t provoke… first.”

 

Rachel screams at him to explain himself.

 

“I was out with Evan for this drag pageantry event in town,” he explains, dabbing his nostrils with a piece of tissue paper, “You know. The pride parade was today. Then we had to go up this building where the pageantry was held. Apparently it was a residential building because this rough-looking fellow came out from his apartment in his dressing gown to where we were loafing around… he just looked at me like I had just murdered a baby.”

 

“No – no, you didn’t ask him if—“

 

“He asked if we was fucking out of my mind and I said _no, sir_ with the most glaringly obvious sarcasm I could muster and then he started yelling at me and told me to get lost because people like us are ‘social pollutants’ fucking with the natural order or something, and we should just die in sewers and have never existed in the first place. And then I told him,” he pauses to catch his breath, “I told him people like him are the reason why society has become Nazis of basic human rights and he had absolute zilch authority to dictate the choices of people. It then got political.”

 

“Jesus. And then he threw you down a stairwell?”

 

“Yeah. There was a bit of a scuffle at first—Evan was frantically trying to push him aside—but the old fruitcake grabbed me by the balls and then chucked me over the railings. Luckily it was only three floors and there was a heap of rubbish where I landed…”

 

“You should have reported him to the cops!” Rachel almost yells, “What kind of batshit _mental_ person would even do that?”

 

Nate appears at the doorway and opens his mouth as if to say something but his expression immediately changes when he sees Jack (Andrew follows behind and gets a shock as well). “Holy fuck, Jack—“

 

Jack re-explains as Rachel continues to apply Neosporin over his wounds and bandage them up. The rest of the day becomes bogged down by the aftermath, the apartment suddenly brewing in negativity, indignation, mostly anger. Jack repeatedly tells them it’s okay, at least the rubbish heap was there to break his fall, at least he walked away with a only few scrapes and a broken rib at most, at least he _walked away,_ alive …

 

Maybe Jack really hasn’t changed after all. He hasn’t stopped trying, neither has he stopped standing up for things that mattered to him.

 

But then again, maybe he _has_ changed. He has grown up after all, every battle scar from his life etched all over him - he wears them like badges pinned to his lapel.

 

Today, Jack Antonoff has never felt taller in his life.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tis a small biographical Jack-Antonoff related ficlet for you Jackheads!
> 
> I remember reading about him being thrown down flights of steps somewhere on his blog so a small part of my brain came up with this weird little story. He's probably a lot cooler IRL.


	8. king (of carrot flowers) – pt. 1

**8.         king (of carrot flowers) – pt. 1**

 

Nate remembers the first time he lost his virginity. It was also the first time in the luckless fifteen years of his life, that Nate Ruess finally realized just maybe, this was what being not lonely felt like.

 

It was a girl from school, she had sat in front of him in homeroom and smiled at him coyly whenever she turned back to pass the circulars. She wasn’t very pretty, or all that memorable, but Nate recalls the single green velvet scrunchie that held her hair up in a high ponytail. It moulded into his hand as he slid it off while his other hand fumbled down her panties, and they were just making out in her bedroom and Nate was nervous, he was excited having jumped bases on his first go…

 

He also remembers how she buried her face in her hands and started crying, her body flushed and warm between his thighs.

 

“It’s alright.” he had whispered in his daze, his hands damp against the small of her back, “It gets better.”

When twenty-six-year-old Nate thinks about this, he bites into his cigarette in the quiet of his shame. He flings it out of the window of Jack’s old SUV, and watches it land on the road like a fluttering banner, before bouncing off into the distance in a series of glowing red parabolas.

 

“Are we there yet?” he whines, lifting his legs against his chest and then kicking the back of Andrew’s seat. Andrew wakes up with a jolt and tells him to stop it as he untangles an arm from the seatbelt strap.

 

“We’re nearly there. Quit kicking, Nate, my dad’s not going to be cool if he finds dirt on the seat.” Jack says from the steering wheel, checking the GPS one last time.

 

Jack’s parents throw them a welcome party at their arrival, with a Betty Crocker’s carrot cake and cups of hot cocoa to share around the electric heater. Rick Antonoff is the jolly, red-faced version of Jack in a white polo and golf pants, the ‘older and groovier male Antonoff’ according to Rachel, jokily. Shira, on the other hand, is generous and endearing, but she is also crazy sarcastic; she reminds Nate of his own mother. As she is asking him if he wants another marshmallow in his cocoa, pink or white? – Nates suddenly misses his mom.

 

(He wonders how she’s holding up in arid old Phoenix, he worries that she’s still doing her shopping in Costco, because a household of currently two people does not need forty-two rolls of toilet paper and a party box of cocktail shrimps.)

 

“Nate, dear,” Shira interrupts sweetly, waving the packet of marshmallows in front of his face, “I’m guessing you want one of each. I won’t bite if you ask, you know.”

 

He makes a phone call before dinner, it’s the first one in weeks. As he listens to the dial tone, he thinks of maybe taking a rain check and making the call tomorrow, so as to put his neediness off by a day; but her voice breaks through the series of beeps with a “Nate, is that you?”

 

He chokes on “Hey mom.”

 

“I thought you were never going to call. How are you, baby? How’s the music coming along?”

 

“It’s all great, it’s all great.” he says, “Sorry I didn’t call. I’ve been… so involved in things.”

 

“Well I hope you’ve been taking rests in between,” she says, like an angel, a saint, “Your dad and I know very well of your workhorse tendencies.”

 

Nate tells her he’s in New Jersey with his new bandmates, and that she should meet them one day, and when she asks if they are good friends he decides to tell her the truth this time (his walls don’t work against her, ever). She says that’s okay, it takes time and effort to form new friendships. He then remembers to ask how dad is doing, how are the DIY renovations with the house going and isn’t dad a little physically unfit to climb up a stepladder to install a suspended ceiling?

 

“He’s going at it as a strong as a bull,” his mother laughs and he hears the indistinct bubbling of liquid in the background and the thud of a knife on a wooden board. Nate breathes a sigh of relief upon realizing that she is finally cooking her own dinners instead of eating out of the microwave, which means fuller nutrients, which means a healthier lifestyle.

 

“By the way,” she is saying, “Libbie asks how you’re doing. She is back for the weekend.”

 

“She is?” Nate blinks at the mention of his sister, and thinks, _no wonder._

 

“She says she’s worried about you. The last time you two met up in Oregon, she had mentioned you weren’t looking well. You haven’t given up on those nasty smokes, have you?”

 

“No,” he says truthfully, “Thing is, mom, I’m nearly halfway through this thing I’m working on. We’ll be done in another couple of months. I’ll come home.”

 

“I’m sure you will.” and the other end of the line goes quiet.

 

“Mom?”

 

“Yes, baby?”

 

“Please don’t worry about me.”

 

She doesn’t answer at first, as though she is deep in thought, and finally replies, “I know, baby. I love you, baby."

 

"Just remember that love is coming home.”

 

And the conversation ends, just like that. Nate looks at his phone, which had just gone dead with a blip, and thinks, _what was... that_?

 

He listens to Jack’s parents bantering in the dining room as they prepare the table for dinner, from where he is sitting in front of the electric heater (his ankles feel like they are on fire now).  The room has gotten warmer, way too warm, and the clinking of cutlery as Rick distributes the tableware while he argues with his wife over the pattern of the new tablecloth (“There _is_ a difference between plaid and checkers.”) – this all-too-familiar domestic scene is making his head throb a little too intensely (from either nostalgia, or envy, or both) so he excuses himself and goes upstairs to the guest room.

 

 _Loneliness,_ he tells himself and he scales the seemingly infinite flight of stairs, _is overrated._

 

And as if without warning, Rachel Antonoff grabs him by the ears the moment he walks in, and kisses him hard on the mouth.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the feedback so far, guys! I'm glad I've a tiny readership (at least)... this is part one of a small Nachel-themed chapter. Enjoy!


	9. king (of carrot flowers) – pt. 2 (or, touch)

**9\.         king (of carrot flowers) – pt. 2 (or, touch)**

 

Everything is happening too fast, it’s trapping him in a whirlwind of his own thoughts – and oh, it’s tight, it’s tight and it’s smothering him. Nate may have just realized he is claustrophobic.

 

Rachel forces Nate onto the bed, her mouth hushing the ‘oh’ escaping his lips, and holds down his arms as she mounts him. Nate doesn’t put up much of a struggle, and while the back of his mind goes _this is too fucking close for comfort,_ an electrified part of him coupled with his libido tell him it’s okay to be touched because it’s _Rachel_ , it’s Rachel actually _initiating_. Her lips are sweet against his tongue, the strawberry of her lip gloss and the faint hint of alcoh-- wait, alcohol?

 

“I’m not sure this is right,” he sits up carefully against her smaller body, praying he doesn’t have a hard-on (and if he has, he is sure glad as fuck he’s wearing his denim skinnies today).

 

She just gives him a cheeky grin, her hands now around his neck, and breathes, “Nate. It’s okay. I’ve got twenty bucks.”

 

“Eh? Are you… _bribing_ me?”

 

“No,” she slides off his lap and does a little jump for joy, “Jacko, I won. You can come out now.”

 

Jack’s head pops up from behind the closet, a cartoon-like mock scowl playing on his lips. He then (burps and) erupts into an uncontrollable fit of laughter when he sees Nate’s chagrined expression. Nate wishes that the floor would open up so he can fall into some sort of sinkhole below and hide from all human contact for the rest of his life. But above all, he just really, really wants to sock Jack in the jaw.

 

He doesn’t talk to anybody during dinner that night. Andrew occasionally kicks him under the table to get him to say something, _anything,_ because he’s being overwhelmed by questions, because Shira likes to know everything (“Stop it mom, you’re clearly embarrassing him,” begs Jack, happily), and he feels that his personal life is slowly being shredded and assimilated into that of the Antonoffs… Andrew isn’t one to reveal too much. But Nate just sits at the corner of the table in Rick’s shadow, poking at his fish and peas like he doesn’t give a damn.

 

“What a little raincloud,” Shira tells Rachel afterwards as she soaps ketchup off a plate.

 

==

 

Rachel apologizes to Nate much later as she sits at the end of Nate’s bed.

 

“Well. It was just… you took me by surprise.”

 

“Jack likes to test me to see how far I would go. Thing is, I am shameless enough to do just about anything.”

 

Nate knows it’s impossible for him to give Rachel the silent treatment when she talks like this. He shuffles and rubs the wrist of his hand gripping the edge of the bed, trying to maintain the betrayed look on his face - Rachel thinks, why, he looks exactly like a puppy that had just been accidentally left by a duck pond to unknowingly wade out in and drown.

 

“Nate,” she pleads, “Talk to me.”

 

“Why would I?” says Nate, as sourly as he can best muster, “You should have known I don’t like to be touched. Scratch that. I _hate_ being touched.”

 

“I was being well, playful.”

 

“And light-headed,” Nate almost bites, “Also, betting on a kiss really wasn’t very nice.” The word ‘nice’ rolls off his tongue like a pill (what a strange word to say).

 

“It was just a kiss.”

 

“It was just a kiss?”

 

She touches his hand and murmurs, “It’s not just that, isn’t it?”

 

Rachel is gazing at him, like she’s thinking, not of what to say in another apologetic attempt to remedy his feelings – but it’s like she’s just critically scrutinizing him. Nate feels her eyes boring into the lesions (scabbed, dried under a layer of regrowth) he already has all over himself, he feels like he’s being stripped naked, like she’s slowly peeling the skin off him, scars and all, and seeing him through his core with those yawning chocolate-coloured telescopes of hers… so he gets up and says, “I’m going outside for a smoke.”

 

The air outside is clear and crisp. The wheel in his Zippo clicks and emits a spark against his thumb. He draws on a fresh cigarette and exhales.

 

Nate feels like a stranger.

 

He’s a stranger in this supposedly familiar place, this house with its quaint little front porch with the swing, and now he’s a stranger with a nicotine stick feeding off four thousand different kinds of chemicals into the air, leaving a grubby handprint in a place he doesn’t _belong_ in. He is an irritant. A bottom feeder in its temporary stay.

 

He doesn’t deserve to be here.

 

The suburban playground is deserted in the flicker of a cracked lamppost. Nate kicks a pebble off the gravel and sits on the red segment of an old and creaky merry-go-round, where he puffs at his smoke. He sits with toes touching for what feels to be a really long time, and his breath catches on the chilly autumn air in clouds of water droplets, white and stark against the dark of the night.

 

He thinks of his family, the bastard who left his sister, of the attic in his parents’ house with the skylight from which he often stargazes… most of the time, he thinks of that strange girl Rachel who had so brazenly straddled him in her own home and kissed him with drunken lips.

_It’s not just that, isn’t it?_

 

Rachel. Rachel confuses him. Yet she bewilders and excites him.

 

_It’s not just that._

 

Maybe he just wants her for now, but what if he’s not supposed to like her? What if he only likes the idea of getting into a relationship just for now, and this clutter of feelings are largely based on that idea? That would end up a disaster, wouldn’t it? Besides, she’s got this sass in her personality, similar to but more understated than that of her obnoxious younger brother. It’s the kind that pisses him off sometimes.

 

What if loneliness is his calling?

 

_It’s not._

 

Then Nate remembers the scent of her hair when she leaned into his face, the taste of strawberry when she parts her lips slightly as they smush into his. The skin on her cheeks smooth against the coarse of his own, coarse and gritty from his addiction to coffin nails and the throb of his insecurity. Her breasts unabashed and soft and full as they pressed against his torso.

Chest heaving, he tries to smoke the imagery off but he winds up gagging on his knee, so he decides to sneak back into the house because sleeping sounds like the best idea right now.

 

Besides, it’s cold as a motherfucking underworld out here.

 

He gets off the merry-go-round and wraps his arms around himself, cursing at the lack of warmth his cardigan has to offer, and begins to trudge back to the house.

 

It must have been about one in the morning because the house is drowned out in pitch-black darkness, save for the small light at the front porch. As he approaches, he sees the figure of Rachel sitting on the swing, in her trenchcoat and her pajamas pants and Doc Martens, waiting. She hears his footsteps crackle against the gravel and looks up. She sees him and rises to her feet.

 

Her smile hits him without warning, so he smiles back at her and sweeps in and tells her to get inside before she catches her death.

 

“Likewise, sir. What you’re wearing right now doesn’t look too warm.” She shrugs off her trenchcoat and puts it around Nate’s shoulder.

 

For a fleeting moment, Nate thinks of his mother - god he misses her _so fucking much –_ and he feels his eyes water (stung by the cold, he tells himself) as he observes Rachel laughing through her cocoon of guilt mixed with reliefs as she clutches the lapels of her trenchcoat and stands, quivering in her pajamas, as (respectfully) close to him as much as possible without _touching_ him. The warmth of her body builds up in the mere inches between them.

 

The sound of loneliness shattering rings out in the stillness of the one a.m. the second Nate tilts his head forward to claim her lips. Still holding onto the trenchcoat (tighter, this time), Rachel holds her breath and keeps her head erect to allow him to deepen the kiss. Nate feels the curve of her smile warming against his chapped, cold lips.

 

This time, he knows better to not let go.

 

(Maybe, maybe love isn’t just an idea after all.)

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My head was a whirlwind when writing these two parts! Hence do excuse the weird writing... I think I might have had been having too much Nachel feels.
> 
> I believe during the course of writing Aim and Ignite, Nate might have been at his downest in months. I guess that's when (I'd like) Rachel [to] step into his life for real.


	10. morpheus

**10\.       morpheus**

 

“Thank you for all your support guys. We are fun. and we hope to see you again.”

 

There is a modest applause and a whoop from the audience. The light flickers off and Nate gets off the stage, pulling up his suspenders and feeling the squelch of the pit stains on his brand new shirt. Andrew and Jack have already made their way backstage with the instruments. The new girl Emily was pretty good on her first day; she’s kind of like Audrey Hepburn, with her petite frame and poise, but she also came equipped with a characteristic birdlike croon and the musical ability to effortlessly slide into the right parts at the right time. Nate has not, though, ignored her dressing-room hijinks with Nate Harold and the drummer he has forgotten the name of. He tries to reserve any further judgment for perhaps much later (if they are still a band then).

 

The venue is a small, intimate one tucked at the far end of a street in New York City. It’s a breath of fresh air compared to the pubs and bars they’ve become so accustomed to performing in.

 

Nate is no stranger to the stage. As far he is concerned, the stage is his second home.

 

This was his first stage in almost half a year. And a proper one it is too – with actual sound engineers behind glass windows, _a chamber orchestra_ , fancier accompaniment of lightings that swivels _etc._ though it isn’t anywhere near as elaborate as the set in _Queen: Live in Budapest_ that he watches on DVD during off-days. Now that kind of gizmo – that’s the peak of his mountain, the unchecked box on his bucket list, the light at the end of his tunnel. No, he’s not ready to throw in the towel yet.

 

“That was a good crowd,” says Andrew brightly when he enters the dressing room.

 

“You have no idea,” Jack replies, yanking off his shirt from the top of his head, causing his curls to tousle, “I have seen bigger crowds.”

 

“It’s good considering we don’t have an album out yet,” defends Andrew, “Most of these people streamed right off our Myspace page. Which is actually pretty great considering how we don’t have a label to help promote.”

 

“Well, the hundred people knew half the lyrics to the setlist. I guess that’s not too crummy.”

 

Nate changes into a fresh tee, throws on a jersey and says, “It was okay.”

 

As he walks out, he hears the showerhead spurt and the squeak of taps as Jack showers with the door wide open, and Andrew has just draped his liquoricelike body over the couch and started tweaking the pre-recordings of ‘Hey! Columbus’ on Garageband.

 

Nobody talks. The adrenaline has long been exhausted and what is left of the hormonal rush before is now a fog of post-concert apathy and the need for complete disconnection from each other.

 

First, he picks up a cold bottle of beer from the venue bar before he steps outside. It is past midnight and most of the people have gone home, or to a diner’s for a late-night bite, leaving a scatter of their photostated concert posters and crumpled setlists on the pavement. He stoops to pick one up.

 

 _I miss having enough funds for full-colour glossy posters_ , which is a strange first thought of the minute but Nate means it. He downs another mouthful of beer.

 

He tries not to remind himself that he is twenty-six going on twenty-seven in three months, but in times like this when alcohol is potent and circulating in his system, he sits on the kerb at one in the morning and mourns the loss of his childhood, the letters ‘fun.’ in black-and-white barely recognizable and crushed in his palm.

 

Someone calls out his name like it’s a question (why not? He’s a question, his life is a question, his existence is a question…).

 

He is probably not even eighteen, but he dresses as though he’s twenty years older. He brushes a straggly lock of blonde hair from his face and peers at Nate face from behind his thick tortoiseshells. Nate shifts away awkwardly, even though he knows they are about four or five meters apart. (the shadows cast a bad illusion over every potential social success story. Also every potential plan of street robbery.)

 

“I’m sorry, do I know you?”

 

“Nope.” replies the kid, his face glowing like a cherub’s in the dark. “But I was a fan.”

 

“Oh.” Sometimes Nate forgets he has fans. He forgets that this career path he’s taken will indefinitely rain him with a number of people who will adore his work, as well as people who’d like nothing better than the idea of him dying in a ditch with his name on their tongues like a bad taste. There is never a right amount of fame to have. “Wait. _Was_?”

 

“Well,” he appears to be choosing his words carefully, “Not trying to sound hipster but when you guys came out as The Format years back I had you under my radar the whole time. I loved your music. I lived in it. It helped me through so much shit, I’ll let you know.”

 

“That’s cool.” Nate puts a hand over his heart as if he’s scared to let this peculiar adolescent stranger open the door to it.

 

“It nearly broke my heart when you guys disbanded. And when I heard you were making a new band,” he sucks in his breath, “I was over the moon. I listened to that new single, got my hands on every demo… it’s all fucking fantastic so far.”

 

“Okay. So? You’re not a fan but everything we’re doing is ‘fucking fantastic so far’?”

 

“I watched your show tonight.”

 

“Well I’m disappointed our live performance let you down.”

 

“It didn’t.”

 

“Okay. Great to know you love us. That’s all. I need to go in. You can yell out to stop me if you ever want a backstage pass.”

 

“Wait, wait— I meant to say that I’ve always respected you for the music you make but… I went to your show a couple of years back. You looked really happy.”

 

In the distance, a little girl cries out her plea for ice-cream. Her mother is then heard shouting at (or over) her and following this, the volume of her wail turns all the way up on a sort of invisible dial.

 

“It was like you felt you’d finally lived your dream. You laughed through a song about heartbreak and then you apologized for it, and when you sang the next song about heartbreak, there was so much soul, mind and body put into it. But Nate, you didn’t have to apologize,” the kid says, “We were happy knowing you’re happy. We were happy to know that you’re happy to be on stage for us.”

 

“That was a long—that was a _long_ time ago. Things change.” Nate’s voice comes out in a halfhearted squeak.

 

“You… you were just really, really broken tonight. You cried as you sang.”

 

“I most definitely didn’t.”

 

“I could hear it. I broke down five rows towards the back. It’s overwhelming to see how far someone can fall from what was once the peak of their life.”

 

“I’m sorry.” says Nate before adding quietly, “I don’t even know you.”

 

“So when I said I was a fan, I was a fan of you _back then_. Your genuine desire to perform, your confidence, your _joy_.” He adds with a tinge of remorse – Christ, he’s not going to stop, isn’t he? “That said, I _am_ also a fan, of your new music.”

 

He looks up at the sky as if he expects rain, and licks the corner of his crusted lips. “But I know it’s gotta be hard. Having to start all over.”

 

When Nate stops breathing loudly, the kid looks at him as if he has just realized something, and murmurs in a hurry, “I’m sorry, I really don’t have a say in this don’t I? It was nice meeting you.”

 

Nate stares into his eyes, the first eye contact he’s made that day, and says as calmly as his heart beats against the cage of his chest, “Fuck off.”

 

He could have sworn that the kid smiled before her turned to walk away (was that relief? Nate is confounded).

 

Rachel calls him maybe about ten minutes later to ask how the first gig went, and she talks about her new shoe design for about three minutes before she realizes that Nate is filling the pauses at the end of her sentences with muffled ‘mmhms’ and ‘uhmms’.

 

“Nate?”

 

“Mmhm?”

 

“You’re… you’re not crying are you?”

 

“No. What are you talking about?” He says this really quietly, under his breath.

 

“Was it Jack? I can tell you where he’s sensitive to tickling. Just touch the bottom of his knee--”

 

“Rachel… listen. I need some time alone. Probably for the next few weeks.”

 

Any of his past girlfriends would have immediately countered with _oh god you’re breaking up with me aren’t you_ , but Rachel – she’s different (actually, he’s not sure if she’s his girlfriend yet, but he reads sexual tension like the back of his hand. It’s something, at least.)

 

“Okay. But you’re gonna miss me,” is what she says.

 

Nate feels his throat well up with the desire to take his words back, but he tongues his teeth and doesn’t part them.

 

“Whatever. Don’t miss me too much.” she continues in a sulk when she realizes he’s not going to reply.

 

“Don’t miss _me_ too much." 

 

“Okay.” The phone goes into a long beep after the click of the receiver. Well. She rightly deserves to be angry at him. If she’s even angry, that is. Even today, he can never tell.

 

As he lies in bed that night, a spark sets off a warzone in Nate’s head… Nate only wishes he has a lever to pull so the curtains can fall across the unstaged frenzy so maybe he can fucking get some sleep. Maybe he can then finally surrender to the darkness that tells a small part of his brain to shut down temporarily for his biological benefit.

_But there’s only one good kind of darkness,_ he thinks as he closes his eyes and curls his fingers around the barrel of an imaginary gun.  

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter ten! Finally hitting the double digits! Also I wrote this in a rush on the plane back to Melbourne so I'm sorry for the lack of anything progressive/ substantial (?)
> 
> This might be the last chapter in a while considering I'm starting school really soon! We see some progress in the careers of these fine young men. Also Nate has his drawn-out dark phases.


End file.
